Rotherham United’s travel woes continued last night at Villa Park when they lost two-nil to Aston Villa, which was their first victory since narrowly beating Yeovil in the EFL Cup in August.
The Millers had much to much respect for their opponents in the first half last night, gave them too much room, let them dictate play and seemed unable to tackle. We looked a million miles away from the team we were on Saturday which beat Derby County. The second half was better but Villa, for me, were always on the front foot without having to break sweat, so to speak. Then I look at the benches and who Villa had the privilege of fetching on. And that’s not to say I have anything at all against any of our players on the bench last night because whoever comes on I believe always gives their all.
Yet there were splashes of good play. We did get some crosses in, we did have chances – when are we going to take those chances? We did give Villa a fright or two and, at one-nil, I think we were still in the game.
And, they tell me, the stats don’t lie – I was shaking my head on Saturday with our possession stats and I did the same last night when they claim that Rotherham had forty per cent possession. Then I got to thinking, well we probably did have the ball more in the second half. Shots at goal show we had just one less than the hosts and we were better in the air and forced the same number of corners.
So, after being a bit down last night my rose coloured specs are back on and I’m looking forward to the trip to Forest on Saturday.
Villa Park
Championship
18/09/2018 8:45 pm
Attendance: 27991
Referee: Andy Davies
| Aston Villa | Rotherham United | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abraham (27), Bolaise (82) | |||||||
| Nyland | Rodak | ||||||
| El Mohamady | Vyner | ||||||
| Hutton | Mattock | ||||||
| Chester | Ajayi | ||||||
| Jedinak | Wood | ||||||
| McGinn | Vaulks | ||||||
| El Ghazi (Bolasie 73) | Towell | ||||||
| Hourihane | Manning (Proctor 68) | ||||||
| Grealish | Williams (Forde 76) | ||||||
| Abraham (Bree 86) | Smith | ||||||
| Kodjia (Adomah 81) | Vassell (Taylor 59) | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Bunn | Price | ||||||
| Bree | Jones | ||||||
| Tuanzebe | Forde | ||||||
| Adomah | Palmer | ||||||
| Bjarnason | Taylor | ||||||
| Whelan | Wiles | ||||||
| Bolasie | Proctor | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 14 | Goal attempts | 13 |
| 4 | On Target | 3 |
| 3 | Corners | 3 |
| 9 | Fouls | 16 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 2 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 60 | % | 40 |
I didn’t think you were that much worse than us BUT that was largely because we were pretty poor to be fair – thank you Steve Bruce!
I didn’t see anything in your side that would overly concern a better side. No real goal threat or creativity. I did think your no. 5 looked excellent – he contained our two strikers well.
I wish you well for the rest of the season but I think it is going to be a long hard one, but that is probably to be expected with your budget/resources.
Thanks for the feedback Barry’sboots – we didn’t seem at the races last night. Thought we gave Villa far too much respect and you can’t afford to do that in this league.